I watch a YouTube channel called Wolter's World. It's a very good travel channel. He just did one on Pittsburgh and I found it interesting that their light rail (the T), has their cars painted to look like old PCC cars. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, the T is mentioned starting at about 10:50. Mark Wolter is actually a business professor at the University of Illinois. Watching his videos, I bet he's a great teacher, due to his enthusiasm.
Pittsburgh - The Don'ts of Visiting Pittsburgh, PA - YouTube
BackshopI watch a YouTube channel called Wolter's World. It's a very good travel channel. He just did one on Pittsburgh and I found it interesting that their light rail (the T), has their cars painted to look like old PCC cars. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, the T is mentioned starting at about 10:50. Mark Wolter is actually a business professor at the University of Illinois. Watching his videos, I bet he's a great teacher, due to his enthusiasm. Pittsburgh - The Don'ts of Visiting Pittsburgh, PA - YouTube
Not very complementary of the T - with it routings only being on the South side of town and not even to the airport.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
The "T" runs along part of the abandoned ROW of the old interurban that went from Pittsburgh all the way out to downtown Washington PA. Other than the downtown, northside stations, and the newer RED line, the majority is not new construction but repurposed with cursory improvements for its current use. The airport didn't even exist when the interurban was built; I, too, wish that they could fund new extensions to the airport plus more northside lines.
The Washington PA station still exists but has been repurposed as a small office building. The tracks have been long gone as the "T" service doesn't end anywhere near Washington PA. For a map of the Pittsburgh Railways Co. routes, visit the <eldorapark.com> website.
“Things of quality have no fear of time.”
Warren JThe "T" runs along part of the abandoned ROW of the old interurban that went from Pittsburgh all the way out to downtown Washington PA. Other than the downtown, northside stations, and the newer RED line, the majority is not new construction but repurposed with cursory improvements for its current use. The airport didn't even exist when the interurban was built; I, too, wish that they could fund new extensions to the airport plus more northside lines. The Washington PA station still exists but has been repurposed as a small office building. The tracks have been long gone as the "T" service doesn't end anywhere near Washington PA. For a map of the Pittsburgh Railways Co. routes, visit the <eldorapark.com> website.
As a kid, my family rented a house on Bethel Park Road and the back yard of that house had the back limit being a small creek with the Pittsburgh Railways tracks on the other side of the creek. I don't recall what the destination of that line was.
Later we moved to a newly built house on California Avenue. To go to school I had to walk from the house, down the hill on Pennsylvania Avenue to South Park Road and then walk East to the school, crossing the Pittsburgh Railways line to Library at Brightwood Road. This was in the 1952-54 era.
Pittsburgh Railways actually had two interurban routes, sharing a the corrent line via Overbrook, which then has some single-track sections, and was the ex-narrow-gauge coal line. Washington Junction is still a junction between the two lines, the line to the south (Drake the current end?) called the Charleroi Line, with that name on the destination roll-signs, but it actoally ran about four-or-five miles further to a loop at a place named Roscoe, and I don't recall seeing any real town with a commercial area there. The line to South Hills Village is the old line to Washington, PA, cut-back and then diverted to a new route for the last few miles. The Arden Trolley Museum is on a bit of the old Pittsburgh Railways RoW.
The route to Castle Shannon that does not go through Overbrook is a combination of the old Dormont Line, mostly PRoW line to its outer end, then the Mt. Lebanon Line, mostly on-street on Liberty Avenue, and the Mt. Lebanon - Castle-Shannon Shuttle.
On this website, the Pittsburgh Railways thread on the Classic Trains Forum has many pictures of the two interurban lines. At one time freight service was offered, with interchange with West Penn Railways at Trafford, end of a long sreetcar line east of the city.
The line west of the city to Sewickly via Neville Iland was also really an interurban. The rebuilding of the Point Bridge caused its bustitution, and it is pity because it did run near the airport.
Corrections have been made to the previous post, so please reread it. Thanks and apologies.
As a teenager, I truly loved Pittsburgh. 1946 - 1948, all Manhattan and The Bronx streetcar lines went bus. But in 1949, Pittsburgh was stll buying new PCCs!
Of couse, later came the massive shrinkage, the rebuilding of the Pont Bridge without streetcar trsacks and the consiquent losses of scenikc routes\, with worse following. And so my affections moved to Toronto.
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